"Schools should be places of safety and sanctuary and learning. When that sanctuary is violated, the impact is felt in every American classroom and every American community."– President George W. Bush, April 16, 2007, following the deadliest single-gunman school shootings in U.S. history at Virginia Tech.

Four and a half years after Bush addressed the nation, in the immediate wake of the December 14 massacre of first graders and educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and less than six months after a mass shooting killed 12 and injured 59 in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater, an emotional President Barack Obama said it was time to take "meaningful action" on gun control.

The question is, what constitutes meaningful action? Is it even possible in a country where an estimated 300 million guns are already on the streets?

In Virginia, which has felt first-hand the sorrow of the mass murder of students, the Second Amendment is held dear. The General Assembly abolished the one-handgun-a-month law earlier this year, and some political leaders believe more guns are the answer to combating the slaughter of unarmed innocents.

“If someone had been armed, there would have been a possibility to stop the person from coming into the school,” Governor Bob McDonnell said December 18 on Washington’s WTOP radio’s “Ask the Governor,” Politico reports.

Delegate Bob Marshall is willing to go a step further than that. The Republican from Prince William County, well known for his staunch opposition of abortion, is already drafting a bill that would require some teachers and school administrators to carry concealed weapons in schools.

"I've got grandkids in public schools in Virginia," Marshall said on WINA. "I want someone there to defend them before damage is done."

The reaction to Governor McDonnell's call to discuss guns in the classroom has been swift. State Senate Democrats have started a petition in opposition.

"It's a joke. It's not serious. Arming teachers and principals is not the answer," says State Senator Creigh Deeds, a Democrat from Bath County, where schools traditionally close the first day of hunting season.

Deeds is certainly not anti-gun. A Second Amendment supporter who's been endorsed by the NRA, he sponsored an amendment to the state constitution to protect Virginians' right to hunt and fish.

He recalls that during his own childhood in rural Virginia, it wasn't uncommon for a kid to bring a gun to school or have one in a truck. Times have changed, and he believes the standard zero-tolerance policy for guns at schools–including for teachers– is now appropriate.

"I just don't see where packing heat is conducive to a nurturing environment," he says.

While he doesn't want to see teachers or administrators carrying weapons, Deeds does support a school resource officer at every elementary school. "It ought to be funded by the state," he says.

McDonnell's suggestion of arming school officials isn't being embraced by school officials, either, with three Virginia associations of educators– elementary principals, secondary school principals, and school superintendents– issuing a joint statement.

"We are concerned, however, with the Governor’s interest in permitting staff to carry firearms as a possible deterrent to violence in schools," says the statement. "We believe the problem is more complex..."

How safe are local schools?

While politicians are discussing change at the legislative level, educators and students are in schools trying to stay focused on the tasks of teaching and learning. That can get especially difficult.

A few days before winter break, rumors circulated that something bad was going to happen at Albemarle High on December 21, the day the Mayan calendar ran out. The threat, while vague, was enough to prompt principal Jay Thomas to make a YouTube video to reassure students and staff that the rumors were investigated and found to be baseless.

Would school administrators and teachers at AHS feel safer with an automatic weapon on hand? The Hook's call to principal Thomas was referred to county schools spokesperson Phil Giaramita, who says that while every proposal by the Governor is considered, "In this case, we're not in favor of arming teachers and staff."

Giaramita expresses concerns over the expense and complication of training educators to be armed guards, especially since he's seen no evidence to suggest it would be effective.

Along with arming teachers, locked schools, buzzers to get in and bulletproof glass are also part of the national school safety discussion, and Giaramita says local school officials are discussing such ideas.

"There's a delicate balance between turning schools into fortresses and keeping them open as the center of the community," he says. "You have to think about cost and whether they make a difference. The first thing is safety," he notes. "Nothing comes before that."

He points out that all Albemarle schools have restricted access to a front door where visitors are required to sign in.

Visitors who are not law abiding may not be deterred by that, especially on multi-building campuses where students freely pass between unlocked doors.

Albemarle has cops– school resource officers– at its four high schools. "We've had in our budget a request for an additional resource officer," says Giaramita.

However, the county has 27 different school buildings, all different ages and configurations, all of which must be individually evaluated, notes Giaramita.

Locally, a federally funded organization called Safe Schools/Healthy Schools, which deals with issues such as bullying, will convene a forum later in January, bringing together police, Region Ten, and UVA to discuss issues related to school safety, says Giaramita. "There's a lot of value to get input from people who are experts," he says.

As for Charlottesville schools, calls to Superintendent Rosa Atkins were not returned at press time.

However, city school principals have sent emails to parents assuring them of the schools' safety, such as one from Walker School principal Vernon Boch, which touts the safety and lockdown drills, the school resource officer, and staff training to question any person they don't know without a visitor's pass.

His message also notes that visitors are required to enter the front door and obtain a visitors pass. However, one skeptical parent points out that there are multiple unsecured entrances to the school.

Armed and educating

"Dumb, dumb, dumb," blasts former Albemarle teacher Mark Crockett on McDonnell's suggestion that educators carry guns. "It makes about as much sense as supply side economics."

Crockett cites a 20/20 special from 2009 called "If only I had a gun." In the simulated event, which was repeated six times, a college student was trained to shoot, and was sitting in a lecture hall with his or her concealed weapon when an armed gunman burst in.

"The first kid carrying a concealed gun struggled to get it out of his holster," recounts Crockett. "Then it got stuck in his shirt. By the end, several kids were 'killed,' including the one with the gun."

Adrenaline is a big factor in slowing response time, noted the show's host, Diane Sawyer, who did a simulation in which even knowing a gunman was going to appear, she couldn't fire soon enough.

As a teacher, asks Crockett, "Where would I carry the gun? In the desk? That's not really secure. On my person? And how much training would I have to have?"

To Crockett, finding a way to reduce the number of guns and tighten access to them is a better plan.

Conservative businessman Bill Pollard says he's not certain armed teachers is the best idea, but he points out that it could have made a difference in deterring someone like Newtown shooter Adam Lanza.

It's an argument also made in an article in the December issue of The Atlantic, "The Case for More Guns (And More Gun Control)," which considers how more concealed weapon carriers with permits could reduce violence– and have in states like Florida and Colorado.

"There's no question that when a kid like that comes to a school, he knows no one there is armed," says Pollard. "That's why no one ever breaks into police stations, because they know they're armed."

"I do think it should be legal for teachers to carry concealed weapons," he continues. "If the threat of guns is there, it could be a huge deterrent even if no one carries a gun."

Security not enough

At UVA's Curry School of Education, experts frequently weigh in on various elements of education and add courses based on the evolution of learning, but spokesperson Audrey Breen says the school has no plans to add gun training to its curriculum.

That doesn't mean professors there don't have opinions on the subject. Dewey Cornell, a national expert on school violence, along with eight other school safety researchers across the country, issued a statement December 19 on more effective prevention of violence.

"Inclinations to intensify security in schools should be reconsidered," say the scholars. "We cannot and should not turn our schools into fortresses."

In mass shootings, whether at schools or not, two factors are the key to prevention, say the experts: The presence of severe mental illness and/or an intense interpersonal conflict that the person could not resolve or tolerate.

Support for mental health needs is critical, say the school safety scholars. They also cite exposure to violence from video games, TV, and movies, and access to guns–especially assault type weapons– as areas that should be addressed to stem mass shootings.

"My concern is that we remember that schools are safe," says Cornell in an email. "One terrible case does not change the overall trend, which is that school violence has declined dramatically since the 1990s and schools remain very safe places for our children.

"The larger problem is the number of shootings in our society," he continues. "The risk of gun violence is far higher outside of schools than in schools."

55 comments

downtowner January 2nd, 2013 | 3:28pm

Teachers and administrators are there to educate children and shouldn't have to train as armed guards. That being said, however, why isn't a general safety and security course offered through schools of education to train future teachers about bullying, angry parents, child custody disputes, etc?
I am not anti-gun by any means, and I would have no problem seeing ARMED resource officers in the schools, since they will have the proper training and responsibility for school safety. Obama wants to say that families would be safer without guns around. So if he really believes that, I hope that he sets a good example for us and dismisses all of the armed Secret Service agents that protect him and his family. Yeah, right....

The Jackal January 2nd, 2013 | 3:51pm

"He or she came at me, I felt threatened" Will be the defense from an armed teacher or security guard after they shoot a student

Bill Marshall January 2nd, 2013 | 5:09pm

At Sidwell Friends school the teachers have bulletproof scurity blankets that they throw over the kids if they hear gunshots. It is a start.

Prerhaps having roving undercover secuity would be good as a deterrent as would having schools take an extra classroom or office and make it a stop off station for police officer to do his reports and be a presence. That would probably serve to humanize police and make them more community oreinted regardless. If the police car were outside it might make someone decide to wait for another day and he might choose to seek help instead of doing something crazy. This would probably be very inexpensive to get started and could be a win win.

Of course if parents actually taught their kids right from wrong and that life isn't fair than we wouldn't have so many cretins running around thinkig they were "cheated" somehow and need to make somebody pay with their life.

discoduck January 2nd, 2013 | 5:15pm

I think teachers should have the option to carry on property. To institute a "zero tolerance" is absolutely worthless as is forcing every teacher to carry one.

I also feel outlawing assault weapons or the associated clips is a waste of time. The only people that would abide by these laws are the law abiding citizens. If there is a demand there will be a supplier.

"So if he really believes that, I hope that he sets a good example for us and dismisses all of the armed Secret Service agents that protect him and his family. Yeah, right...."

Side note on this comment: Interesting article today about the newspaper that was printing all the gun owners names/addresses in Ny State counties. They just hired armed security guards for their building.

Fan of Anonymous January 2nd, 2013 | 5:24pm

These "intense interpersonal conflicts" are predictably increasing with all of us, and any social environment overloaded with guns raises the fear of gun carriers. Their "training" is no good to themselves or anyone else. A reasonable waiting period and examination of the mental and emotional fitness would likely have prevented nearly all the millions of guns sold in the last couple weeks. Now we've got that many more fearful, unfit gun owners, "training" themselves,-- working over in their minds how they'd respond to "dangers," not much different than distraught, loner misfits, glued to their video games.

skeptic January 2nd, 2013 | 5:53pm

There are several teachers in the area who I know I would NOT want to be allowed to be armed around children, and would really represent new threats to the school community in which they are allowed to still work. Some of that is due to their own demonstrated poor judgment, and some of that is due to their extreme lack of physical conditioning that would make them only targets to have their guns taken from them and used my far more fit students. We can't reasonably blame either modern culture, violent video games, or gangsta rap for the explosion of gun violence in the U.S. Those same phenomena are occurring worldwide, yet every other civilized country that has far stricter gun control also has an exponentially lower per capita rate of gun violence. So, the rate of gun ownership between developed conutries seems to be the statistically meaningful variable in the equation, and until we get that problem solved we will remain a wealthier version of the unstable countries where the armed (but lawful) fanatics run amok. It is true that even with stricter gun control, there will be incidents where lunatics use guns to harm the innocent. But when guns are more difficult to obtain, those frequency of those incidents will be reduced, as will the farmer more tragic, in the aggregate, rate of accidental killings involving the hundreds of kids each year who die after someone gets ahold of a gun lawfully owned by someone else (like a parent) and "plays" with it.

Henry January 2nd, 2013 | 7:13pm

Until the children all have military-style semiautomatic rifles with mega-clips for maximum ammo, our schools are not safe.

moi January 2nd, 2013 | 7:25pm

@Bill Marshall

Sidwell also has 11 armed guards!

**** January 2nd, 2013 | 7:27pm

Are first responders going to hesitate before rushing into a school on lockdown knowing there are marginally trained armed teachers inside? How are they going to instantly distinguish between an armed teacher in a hallway vs. an armed intruder? If a plain-clothes officer reaches the school first won't he/she have to worry about being shot by an armed teacher? This is a recipe for disaster. If teachers need defensive hardware maybe start with tasers or some other non-lethal device.

jimi hendrix January 2nd, 2013 | 7:34pm

A dozen cops, with a guns and vest is good enough for Obamas kids school. One should do it for the rest of us.

jimi hendrix January 2nd, 2013 | 7:35pm

A dozen cops, with guns and vest is good enough for Obamas kids school. One should do it for the rest of us.

Wog January 2nd, 2013 | 8:50pm

Concerning the Sidwell School and anyone else relying on bulletproof blankets to protect the children and staff huddled underneath at the sound of shots - Of course no armed paranoid or psychopath would have the smarts to whip the blanket off and blast everyone underneath.

Police or other armed, trained professionals are needed to guard the schools just like they guard power plants, airports, courts, and many other sensitive government and private installations. And there should always be more than one guard. The one guard strategy is too easily defeated by two attackers.

As one security expert said, the only way to stop one armed person is with another armed person.

And trying to restrict weapons is not the answer - making good people helpless does not make bad people harmless - actually, it empowers the bad actors.

C'ville Native January 2nd, 2013 | 8:59pm

@downtowner - obviously you don't recall when JFK was shot. Secret Service are there because our POTUS is a target.

Root of the problem - automatic weapons, people who have no respect for guns (and there are quite a few in this community), mental health being ignored and cut for decades. We have Blue Ridge Hospital vacant and a whole lot of mentally ill homeless on the Downtown Mall and elsewhere that shouldn't be. Recall the Coal Tower shooting? The perp signed himself early from a 72 hour UVA phyc stay and killed two people. In all these mass shootings there is a common denominator - mental illness or suspected mental illness.

Anyone who needs a semiautomatic to go hunting is a pi## poor shot. You shouldn't own a gun anyway. Those guns have no business being in the hands of an average citizen. BTW - we have a "regulated militia" it is called our Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force and National Guard, our State and Local Police.

And if you say you need those guns against a tyrannical government - go ahead, let me know how your Bushmaster will do against a US Tank.

The NRA is in the pocket of Smith & Wesson and all other gun manufacturers who want to make money.

Wog January 2nd, 2013 | 9:46pm

2 C'ville native. Saying to me "You shouldn't own a gun or a semi-automatic" (I'm not sure which position you are taking), is no different from me saying "You can have free speech but you shouldn't be able to use the strongest or most effective words." A better student of the Constitution would understand that the Army, Navy, etc are institutions of the government intended to protect the country against foreign powers. The militias were supposed to be institutions of the citizenry capable of protecting against the tyranny of the federal government. The militias are not the National Guard. The only real attempt to use the state militias (effectively the forerunner of today's National Guard) to oppose the federal government was the American civil war, so that's not the meaning of the US Constitution either (or else the federal government violated the US Constitution by bringing force to bear on the Southern states. And to address another point you make, revolutions that succeed usually do so not by defeating superior firepower with inferior weapons in a direct confrontation but by defeating some forces and converting others so (to use your imagery) some of those tanks turn their guns on supporters of the established government. While neither I nor anyone I know advocates that course of action, the realistic possibility that it could happen may provided an invaluable restrain on the abuse of institutionalized power.

Gasbag Self Ordained Expert January 2nd, 2013 | 9:56pm

Skeptic, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your first couple of sentences accurately describe about 25% to 35% of the employees in the various local law enforcement agencies where carrying a firearm is required. It comes from sitting behind a steering wheel 10 to 12 hours a day, eating fast food or dounts whenever thay have a chance during said 10 to 12 hours, and being too tired or having the time to go to the gym after the work day is over. So if we are going to start throwing rocks, we have to be real careful how we describe the ability of another profession to carry firearms.

Ponce De leon January 2nd, 2013 | 10:34pm

At 65k a year it would cost less than 1.00 per day per student to protect kids at a rate of 1 guard per 360 students and a 185 day school year. (just so you now what it would cost) This is assumoing that they could be incoorporated into the existing infrastucturesystem without more beauracracy.

If teachers had a bulletptoof blanket to toss over the kids it would certainly slow things down hopefully enough to save a lot of lives for a little cost.

Another idea would be for the noise grenades to be tossed at the assailant forcing him to cover his ears or distract him as it is all about the time saved that matters.

There is no reason why a school should NOT have a person specisically trained and certified to challenege a suspect. There should also be a law passed that allows said person to shoot first if certain protocols are met... for instance someone walikg up the school sidewalk looking like rambo with a cache of weapons.

Even if they instituite gun control it will not stop nut jobs so these suggestions can be done with the gun control debate. Its not an either or circumstance

Really? January 2nd, 2013 | 11:20pm

So let me get this straight, we now need armed guards in 1) schools 2) movie theaters 3) protection for firefighters and first responders 4) fast food restaurants 5) political gatherings in Arizona. No.....an obscene amount of guns with military grade options available to the general public isn't the problem.

And if you believe that guns don't kill people, people do then you must believe that drunk drivers don't kill people - cars do and yelling "fire" as a joke in a crowded place doesn't kill people - people kill themselves by responding.

Wog January 3rd, 2013 | 1:57am

2 Really? Trained guards are needed in public schools. Businesses and private schools can contract for security or not and people can decide whether or not to patronize places without security. Don't overlook the fact that persons licensed for concealed carry with appropriate training undertaken at their own expense (ideally with more training than currently required) could provide much of the security now lacking in many venues and at little or no taxpayer cost. It is no coincidence that most recent mass shootings (Columbine, Newtown, VaTech, and the Aurora Co theater shooting) took place in so-called gun-free zones. Only the AZ shooting was not in a gun-free zone. As further proof that restricting guns does not lead to less gun violence, look at the two most restricted cities in the USA, Washington DC and Chicago. Both cities are perennially ranked at or near the top for gun violence. And gun violence in Great Britain has doubled in the years since Britain banned handguns. An interesting sidenote is that Smith & Wesson is now British owned.

Perhaps I shouldn't be, but I'm mildly surprised at some of the inane comments posted here.

Ponce de Leon parrots the NRA call for more armed guards in schools, and then suggests it would only cost "less than $1.00 a day per student" to pull this off. So, for a 500-student school, that's $500 a day. And there are a lot of schools in the U.S (more than 132,000). And there are more than 440,000 school buses (armed guards there too?). Thus we are talking about a substantial cost to implement the Ponce de Leon-NRA plan.
Meanwhile, the NRA mostly backs conservative Republicans who detest any tax increase for any purpose. Just look at some of those who sit on the NRA Board of Directors:

• Grover Norquist (who created the pledge against any tax increase that gets forced on Republican politicians, and who said he wanted to make government so small it could be be "drowned" in a bathtub);

• former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr (who said "I am a real fan of handguns manufactured by Glock," and praised Glock's former CEO after he was convicted of racketeering and theft and sentenced to 7 years in prison);

• Kenneth Blackwell, former Ohio secretary of state, who made every effort to suppress voting rights there (and who has railed against abortion, the Affordable Care Act, gay marriage, women's rights, and who routinely touts "the supremacy of God.");

• former Idaho Senator Larry Craig (yeah, the same guy who took the "wide stance" in that Minneapolis bathroom stall...and who said, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, that the New Orleans lower 9th ward should be "turned back to what it was, wetlands.");

• former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore (who left the state with ruined finances, and then lied about, claiming, "State government is in sound financial shape." It wasn't. Gilmore is now the president of the right-wing Free Congress Foundation, started by Joseph Coors and Paul Weyrich, who infamously said, "I don't want everybody to vote.");

• Oliver North, who subverted the Constitution, lied about it, and obstructed justice during the Iran Contra scandal (anad who continues to perpetrate the lie that torture "was what allowed us to find out where bin Laden was hiding," and who says that "the prophesies in the Bible are true." ;

• Chuck Norris, a grade C movie actor who said of former right-wing Alabama Supreme Court Judge Roy Moore, "he is a true patriot." As Alabama Chief Justice, Moore installed and refused to remove a two-and-a-half ton monument of the Ten Commandments in the Alabama judicial building...Moore was removed from his position by unanimous vote of the Alabama Court of the Judiciary. Both Roy Moore and Norris now pen columns for the right-wing rag WorldNetDaily.

The NRA truly has a tag team of right-wing crazies on its Board of Directors. No wonder they employ Wayne LaPierrre. They all believe in the same stupid stuff. LaPierre and the NRA are calling for more government funding on behalf of an organization comprised of ideologues who both hate government and abhor tax increases of any kind. The term hypocrite does not do them justice.

Wog fancies himself a constitutional scholar, but he has little if any idea what he is talking about. Article I, Section 8, Clause 16 of the Constitution states quite specifically that "“Congress shall have the power to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia.” Moreover, the federal government is given the power in the Constitution to "discipline" state militias. and members of state militias (National Guard) take an oath to " support and defend the Constitution of the United States" and to " bear true faith and allegiance to the same." And the U.S. Constitution –– in Article III, Section 3, Clause 1 –– defines treason as "levying war" against the United States. So, Wog, like most conservatives it seems, is utterly clueless about the Constitution.

discoduck January 3rd, 2013 | 8:44am

To bad the Supreme Court does not understand the Constitution as well as you do Democracy. I am sure you are familiar with Dc vs. Heller but no doubt those judges were all NRA nuts as is everyone else who owns a weapon.

You like to pick and choose your Articles and change the meaning of words to outline your agenda just as DC tried to do.

You also like to point to the NRA as the national evil. You fail to mention how many people join the NRA simply because of people who think like you do and not because they like or even know the people that run it.

I am not a member of the NRA but considering the knee jerk reactions and lack of focus on why mentally ill people are killing other people I may join today.

Really? January 3rd, 2013 | 9:00am

@Wog - why not study the gun violence patterns of other countries to prove your theory? I doubt it will hold.

Bill Marshall January 3rd, 2013 | 10:00am

just for the record they already have armed guards , contant police presence at many many schools especially in urban areas.

democracy January 3rd, 2013 | 10:16am

Thanks, discoduck, for helping to prove my point. Conservatives not only are often clueless about the Constitution; worse, they don't really believe in it, or its core, embedded values.

They do not believe in or subscribe to the values of popular sovereignty, equality, justice, freedoms for all citizens, tolerance, and promoting the general welfare of society.

In fact, the U.S. Constitution was written precisely for those values, promising " a more perfect Union" and "Justice," and "domestic Tranquility" and the "common defence" and "the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." And , importantly, the Constitution was written to "promote the general Welfare" of society.

But conservatives don't believe in those values, even as they rhetorically wrap themselves in the flag. Their policies over the last three decades have eviscerated the American standard of living. Public infrastructure has deteriorated. Deficits and debt have skyrocketed. George W. Bush and his neo-con allies lied about "weapons of mass destruction, and saddled the nation with two costly, unfunded and badly-managed wars. Most egregiously, conservative supply-side economic policies –– big tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy coupled with laissez-faire regulation –– aided and abetted massive corruption and fraud on Wall Street and caused the broken economy. And then Bush bailed out the big bankers and hedge-funders who were behind it all.

Conservatives, like uber-hypocrite Antonin Scalia, pretend there is such a thing as an "original intent" to the Constitution –– even though Madison's Notes on the Constitution make clear such a position is preposterous. They rail against judicial "activism," except, of course, when they practice it. And, oh, do they ever practice it, with DC v. Keller and Citizens United the two best recent examples.

In the Citizens United case, Thanks, discoduck, for helping to prove my point. Conservatives not only are often clueless about the Constitution; worse, they don't really believe in it, or its core, embedded values.

They do not believe in or subscribe to the values of popular sovereignty, equality, justice, freedoms for all citizens, tolerance, and promoting the general welfare of society.

In fact, the U.S. Constitution was written precisely for those values, promising " a more perfect Union" and "Justice," and "domestic Tranquility" and the "common defence" and "the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." And , importantly, the Constitution was written to "promote the general Welfare" of society.

But conservatives don't believe in those values, even as they rhetorically wrap themselves in the flag. Their policies over the last three decades have eviscerated the American standard of living. Public infrastructure has deteriorated. Deficits and debt have skyrocketed. George W. Bush and his neo-con allies lied about "weapons of mass destruction, and saddled the nation with two costly, unfunded and badly-managed wars. Most egregiously, conservative supply-side economic policies –– big tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy coupled with laissez-faire regulation –– aided and abetted massive corruption and fraud on Wall Street and caused the broken economy. And then Bush bailed out the big bankers and hedge-funders who were behind it all.

Conservatives, like uber-hypocrite Antonin Scalia, pretend there is such a thing as an "original intent" to the Constitution –– even though Madison's Notes on the Constitution make clear such a position is preposterous. They rail against judicial "activism," except, of course, when they practice it. And, oh, do they ever practice it, with DC v. Keller and Citizens United the two best recent examples.

In the Citizens United case, conservatives on the Court threw out a century of legislation and Supreme Court precedents to invoke the outcome they wanted. Conservative jurist Richard Posner – appointed a federal judge by Ronald Reagan – said this about the Citizens United decision: “Our political system is pervasively corrupt due to our Supreme Court taking away campaign-contribution restrictions on the basis of the First Amendment.”

In the Heller v. DC gun decision, Antonin Scalia wrote for the conservative majority that interpreting the Constitution – in this particular case, the 2nd amendment – means the Court is ...”guided by the principle that “[t]he Constitution was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary as distinguished from technical meaning.” Not far after, Scalia says that the term “bear arms” was most frequently used in a military context.

Then Scalia veers abruptly – and inconsistently – from his earlier statement that the Constitution was to be interpreted in light of its “normal and ordinary” meaning to say that “Of course, as we have said, the fact that the phrase was commonly used in a particular context does not show that it is limited to that context.”

In other words, the “normal and ordinary” meaning is that “bears arms” applies to a military context, not to individuals, but since that doesn’t work for Scalia’s predetermined outcome, he’ll simply ignore an avowed philosophy of “original intent, and just make it up. Richard Posner says it clear that the 2nd amendment does not have anything to do with an individual right to bear arms, but "“That didn’t slow down Scalia. He loves guns. He’s a hunter.” Posner cites Scalia's decision as an example of the “real deterioration in conservative thinking.”

The NRA and the Republican party are now the poster children for that kind of "thinking." Posner calls it "goofy." He's right.

The NRA was originally created to improve "marksmanship," not to lobby against gun control or any kind of reasonable limitations and regulations of guns. In fact, as constitutional scholar Adam Winkler notes, "In the 1920s and ’30s, the NRA was at the forefront of legislative efforts to enact gun control." Its president, a three-time Olympic gold medalist in pistol shooting who was called “the best shot in America” helped to "draft the Uniform Firearms Act, a model of state-level gun-control legislation." As Winkler points out, "Frederick’s model law had three basic elements. The first required that no one carry a concealed handgun in public without a permit from the local police. A permit would be granted only to a “suitable” person with a “proper reason for carrying” a firearm. Second, the law required gun dealers to report to law enforcement every sale of a handgun, in essence creating a registry of small arms. Finally, the law imposed a two-day waiting period on handgun sales. The NRA today condemns every one of these provisions as a burdensome and ineffective infringement on the right to bear arms."

And, "When Congress was considering the first significant federal gun law of the 20th century—the National Firearms Act of 1934, which imposed a steep tax and registration requirements on “gangster guns” like machine guns and sawed-off shotguns—the NRA endorsed the law."

And, "In the 1960s, the NRA once again supported the push for new federal gun laws. After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 by Lee Harvey Oswald, who had bought his gun through a mail-order ad in the NRA’s American Rifleman magazine, Franklin Orth, then the NRA’s executive vice president, testified in favor of banning mail-order rifle sales. 'We do not think that any sane American, who calls himself an American, can object to placing into this bill the instrument which killed the president of the United States'.”

Even Scalia, at the end of the Keller decision, notes that nothing in it should "be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms."

oops, some editing errors in the comment above...sorry.... a cleaned up version follows:

Thanks, discoduck, for helping to prove my point. Conservatives not only are often clueless about the Constitution; worse, they don't really believe in it, or its core, embedded values.

They do not believe in or subscribe to the values of popular sovereignty, equality, justice, freedoms for all citizens, tolerance, and promoting the general welfare of society.

In fact, the U.S. Constitution was written precisely for those values, promising " a more perfect Union" and "Justice," and "domestic Tranquility" and the "common defence" and "the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." And , importantly, the Constitution was written to "promote the general Welfare" of society.

But conservatives don't believe in those values, even as they rhetorically wrap themselves in the flag. Their policies over the last three decades have eviscerated the American standard of living. Public infrastructure has deteriorated. Deficits and debt have skyrocketed. George W. Bush and his neo-con allies lied about "weapons of mass destruction, and saddled the nation with two costly, unfunded and badly-managed wars. Most egregiously, conservative supply-side economic policies –– big tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy coupled with laissez-faire regulation –– aided and abetted massive corruption and fraud on Wall Street and caused the broken economy. And then Bush bailed out the big bankers and hedge-funders who were behind it all.

Conservatives, like uber-hypocrite Antonin Scalia, pretend there is such a thing as an "original intent" to the Constitution –– even though Madison's Notes on the Constitution make clear such a position is preposterous. They rail against judicial "activism," except, of course, when they practice it. And, oh, do they ever practice it, with DC v. Keller and Citizens United the two best recent examples.

In the Citizens United case, conservatives on the Court threw out a century of legislation and Supreme Court precedents to invoke the outcome they wanted.

Conservative jurist Richard Posner – appointed a federal judge by Ronald Reagan – said this about the Citizens United decision: “Our political system is pervasively corrupt due to our Supreme Court taking away campaign-contribution restrictions on the basis of the First Amendment.”

In the Heller v. DC gun decision, Antonin Scalia wrote for the conservative majority that interpreting the Constitution – in this particular case, the 2nd amendment – means the Court is ...”guided by the principle that “[t]he Constitution was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary as distinguished from technical meaning.” Not far after, Scalia says that the term “bear arms” was most frequently used in a military context.

Then Scalia veers abruptly – and inconsistently – from his earlier statement that the Constitution was to be interpreted in light of its “normal and ordinary” meaning to say that “Of course, as we have said, the fact that the phrase was commonly used in a particular context does not show that it is limited to that context.”

In other words, the “normal and ordinary” meaning is that “bears arms” applies to a military context, not to individuals, but since that doesn’t work for Scalia’s predetermined outcome, he’ll simply ignore an avowed philosophy of “original intent, and just make it up. Richard Posner says it clear that the 2nd amendment does not have anything to do with an individual right to bear arms, but "“That didn’t slow down Scalia. He loves guns. He’s a hunter.” Posner cites Scalia's decision as an example of the “real deterioration in conservative thinking.”

The NRA and the Republican party are now the poster children for that kind of "thinking." Posner calls it "goofy." He's right.

The NRA was originally created to improve "marksmanship," not to lobby against gun control or any kind of reasonable limitations and regulations of guns. In fact, as constitutional scholar Adam Winkler notes, "In the 1920s and ’30s, the NRA was at the forefront of legislative efforts to enact gun control." Its president, a three-time Olympic gold medalist in pistol shooting who was called “the best shot in America” helped to "draft the Uniform Firearms Act, a model of state-level gun-control legislation." As Winkler points out, "Frederick’s model law had three basic elements. The first required that no one carry a concealed handgun in public without a permit from the local police. A permit would be granted only to a “suitable” person with a “proper reason for carrying” a firearm. Second, the law required gun dealers to report to law enforcement every sale of a handgun, in essence creating a registry of small arms. Finally, the law imposed a two-day waiting period on handgun sales. The NRA today condemns every one of these provisions as a burdensome and ineffective infringement on the right to bear arms."

And, "When Congress was considering the first significant federal gun law of the 20th century—the National Firearms Act of 1934, which imposed a steep tax and registration requirements on “gangster guns” like machine guns and sawed-off shotguns—the NRA endorsed the law."

And, "In the 1960s, the NRA once again supported the push for new federal gun laws. After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 by Lee Harvey Oswald, who had bought his gun through a mail-order ad in the NRA’s American Rifleman magazine, Franklin Orth, then the NRA’s executive vice president, testified in favor of banning mail-order rifle sales. 'We do not think that any sane American, who calls himself an American, can object to placing into this bill the instrument which killed the president of the United States'.”

Even Scalia, at the end of the Keller decision, notes that nothing in it should "be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms."

You really believe that ruling proves your point? You are seriously questioning the intergrity and mental capabilites of the highest Court in the land as a whole?

I will go with the 'crazies'. Thanks anyway.

At least the NRA part was informative and contained info I was not aware of.

Bill Marshall January 3rd, 2013 | 1:24pm

democracy... you poor fellow.... those mean old republicans must have hit you with the dodge ball too many times...

You have NO CLUE what you are talking about on most subjects and the ones you pretend to now about you twist the facts like a pretzel to make them fit.

So you think conservatives evisorated the middle class in america? Despite your rantings the middle class have it better now than ever before. All you need to do is compare apples and apples. Take any job that is essentially the same in title and substance and compare what standard of living people get for thier output. Jr Accountant? In 1970 The guy used an adding machine with a handle unless his boss was lucky enough to buy an electomechanical one. He used a typewriter (probably still manual) and figured out payroll deductions by looking each employees wages up in a comic book looking thing. He wrote the checks by hand and spent hours and hours finding his mistakes. For that he had a small house in a neighborhood near martha jefferson, drove a 5 year old car and had catastrophic health insurance. That same jr accountant today pushes a few buttons and the checks are printed on a printer. They go online and pay the payroll taxes and the quickbooks makes it very hard to screw up, and if you do it has programs to help you find it that highlight possible issues. He lives in the same neighbrhood, but his car has air bags, his house has A/cCand internet, he has a cell phone, the schools have computer labs for his kids, the high schools have lit stadiums for the games, he has access to easier credit , if he goes to the doctor they have way more choice to treat his ailments, There is much more public transportation, if he get unemployed he doesn't get 13 weeks and cut off he gets 99 weeks, then food stamps, then Health care assistance. You are simply LYING when you say the middle class has suffered.They may have lost a little ground as budgets get cut but the middle class has it pretty damn good in America. The only complaint the middle class legitamatly have is that excessive government regulation chased away too many jobs, liberal government union payscales drove up wages and chased away jobs and the government kept giving student loans to anybody which allowed universities to jack up tuition faster than health care . It is a greedy liberal middle class that wants the rich to pay their way. They will suffer greatly whe austerity comes as they should.

When they do maybe they can explain to their kids that the college fund is all gone because of the weekends at the beach and cruises to alaska that middle class people NEVER took 30 years ago.

By, the way.. the rich got rich by selling in volume not taking money at gunpoint. 70% of apples sales are overseas, same for GE and even wal mart sells worldwide... that wealth is not at the expense of americans, they pay less for anything electronic and the same for non designer clothes as they did 25 years ago.

Your just mad because they had a stronger work ethic than you and actually did something besides whine about how "unfair" life is.

You want more "proof" go to any nursing home and interview people in their 80s and ask them what their life was like.... ask them to describe what standard of living they had... ask them if they coulds whip up dinner in the microwave or even actually order a pizza for delivery... ask them if it was even legal for stores to be open on Sudays or if their high school had A/C. Ask them if they had friends die because there was no treatment for diabetes or cancer.

Life is tough, get a helmet and a work ethic and you will be just fine. Sure some people cannot find a "job" but they can surely find "work" (unless a mexican has snuck 4 thousand miles to do what you refuse to do because you are "better" than that. )

I am not defending conservatives.. they spend too much money too but at least they PRETEND to admit it needs to stop.

Dolemite January 3rd, 2013 | 2:07pm

Man, Bill I remember this old Iroquois man that lived in my neighborhood when I was a child back in the 1920's. He said if they couldn't find Hurons to torture they'd sit around the fire and burn their own toes off. Those were some tough people, and for them running water meant a creek, know what I'm sayin' ? Tough people with no retirement plan. That's what made American great. And then it became the United States. Now another thing...oh wait the topic was school security wasn't it? Oh shoot, I mean shucks. Bill don't you have some wood to chop or water to carry or a AARP day program to walk to barefoot in the snow instead of typing misspelled rants?

Percy Kution January 3rd, 2013 | 2:52pm

Some of those heated teachers are already packing. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Bill Marshall January 3rd, 2013 | 3:30pm

Dolemeite...

You don't even need to go back as far as I referenced.... go back to 1980 or 1990 or even 2000 and simply graph out modern inventions that make life easier.

American are spoiled and need to admit it before it will get better. We are giving the government 60 cents, they are spending a dollar and giving the bill to future generations...

When they did this in the past we got the grand coulee dam, the Tennesee valley authority that provided rural electricity and a national highway system, Today we get bankrupt solar companies, fat welfare cheats and 30 BILLION in pork attatched to the Sandy Relief bill.

In Africa the only way you get a free house is if the Rebels kill your neighbor, in america you just cry loud enough and the government builds you one.

Sorry for my spelling, I was a product of the C-ville schools.

Dolemite January 3rd, 2013 | 4:04pm

Bill what you're offering is unsubstantiated opinion (and it's off topic). If you look at what Democracy offered, it's reference to facts that can be checked by reference to written records. One might argue that the period of slave labor was when we were really spoiled. Or when we took 100% of Indian lands, or when folks like John Foster Dulles set about ridding the Guatemalans of their land for the United Fruit Company to "work hard and get rich" there, but that's irrelevant too. Being "spoiled" is not a meaningful subject of a political or institutional debate, unless you find a scientifically agreed-upon way to measure and demonstrate it.

You have enough intellectual discipline to see this don't you? Or have you gone soft? No leave me alone, I'm off to enlist in the Well-Ordered Mental Militia.

Bill Marshall January 3rd, 2013 | 5:05pm

Dolemite, what Democracy offers is hardly "facts" they are his twisted interpretaions of events as he sees them .

What am I not substantiating? Was there not dam built that flooded 500 thousand acres making it productive farmland? Dd the Tennesee valley authority not help with rural electrification? Did the investment in highways not occur? Did solyndra not go bankrupt? Was there not 30 billion in pork heaped on the sandy relief bill?

Yes it is my opinion that the american middle class is spoiled. They are consumng money that is not theirs to consume and want to give someone else the bill for it without remorse.

The rich pay their way.. there is no arguing that, the only question is how much of YOUR way they should pay in addition to theirs . Democracy makes claims based on cold sterile dollars and twisted staistics. I offer a way to quantify it... Here is another one... go to the welfare homes in C-ville, occupied for the last 30 years by the same family and look at their assets and their standard of living compared to 30 years ago in the same apartment. It is unfair to try and compare them to someone in keswick and say they are worse off because their standard of living did not accelerate as fast as a rich persons. They are not "worse" off they are simply still behind a rich person.. the distance is irrelevant if they have a full belly and better access to services, than ever before.(which they do. )

The problem with giving away services without getting anything in return is sooner or later you run out of other peoples money.

To get BACK to the subject at hand it is the same mindset that Democacy takes as to why we are here, we have an entire generation that feels entitled to everything including retribution for their unhappiness, which IN MY OPINION is caused by people being falsely taught that you can legislate fairness and that equality means everyone gets the same number of apples and if you get less than you were wronged and Uncle Sam needs to make it right no matter who gets hurt in the process. That kid in Newtown killed those children because he was mad that his mother liked them best.. so he felt like it was justified to not stop with killing his mother but to also kill the kids who did nothing more than like her back. That is what we are creating by trying to legislate equla ooutcomes regardless of effort.

You will see it get worse in 2015 when all the obamacare benefits have kicked in and the bums on the mall all get free healthcare and food stamps and only need to use the money they bum for cigarettes and booze. (they will get the vicodin for free with their fake back pain)
As long as they can find a place to crash they will not work and give up that 10k worth of benefits, (which will cost the rest of us 20k to provide)

We would'nt need armed guards if parents would take the responsibility to actually raise thier kids instead of putting them n a room alone with the internet and then demanding society pay for their therapy when they start killing animals in the woods.

Paul January 3rd, 2013 | 6:13pm

I wouldn't say that it should mandatory to arm a school, nor would I prohibit it legally. It should be a school choice. For public schools, let them decide on a school by school basis how they want to secure their facility. People will vote and choose with their feet.

I would feel much safer if my child were in a school that had armed security personnel. They don't have to dress or look like storm troopers and be imposing to children, but I'd like to see limited entrances, 1 or 2 into a school (you can have multiple exit only doors for fire exists), and armed personnel at each doorway, and ideally foot patrol. I'd pay the extra money for this...and if public schools don't offer it, will be looking to private schools that do.

We have armed security at airports and banks...I'd like to have armed security protecting kids at school who are sitting ducks for psycho paths.

We advertise gun free school zones. Ask yourself why such killers don't enter police stations and go on rampages. And if they don't, how long would that rampage last?

There is no way to make the world gun free....the guns exist and will continue to exist. There is no way to make the world killer and psycho path free. Not with programs and not with laws. You may convince yourself that you're reducing the likelihood, statistics may prove you right or wrong, but I don't want to risk my most valuable asset to hypotheticals...I want the discretion in having my child protected. It doesn't have to be an armed teacher, but even a single security guard would be better than nothing.

The government and the government school system, despite the tremendous cost to tax payers, has created a vulernable unsafe environment for our children. Politicians who decry this shooting are often the same ones who've been behind establishing this system, yet seem to assume no culpability in the matter. They've left our schools unprotected and promoted gun free school zones and leave exposed our children's lives, and point the blame on inanimate objects and psycho paths, versus their actions in stripping away American's abilities to defend themselves and their children.

democracy January 4th, 2013 | 7:02am

Ah, so both discoduck and Bill Marshall side with the "crazies." What a surprise. And yes, discoduck, the DC v. Heller decision shows just how far the "originalists" on the Supreme Court will go to implement the outcome they want, the Constitution be damned. The Citizens United case amplifies that point. The Bush v. Gore decision –– activism run amok by the Court conservatives, with serious national consequences –– nails it shut.

The economic mess is traceable to Ronal Reagan, who promised big tax cuts, huge increases in defense spending, and a balanced budget (wink). But early on, Reagan's budget director, David Stockman, realized that "the economic theory behind the President's program wasn't working." And while Reagan continued to promise balanced budgets (okay, he lied, and he never submitted one), "Investment analysts, looking closely at the Stockman budget figures...saw were enormous deficits ahead." They were right. The national debt exploded under Reagan (and Bush1). How did Reagan deal with it? He shifted the bill to working class Americans, while continuing big tac cuts for corporations and the wealthy. As reporter Will Bunch noted, "While wealthy Americans benefitted from Reagan's tax policies, blue-collar Americans paid a higher percentage of their income in taxes when Reagan left office than when he came in."

After the Clinton era, with tax increases on the wealthy (passed without a single Republican vote in Congress), and more than 23 million jobs created, and budget surpluses that were to be used to pay down debt and preserve Social Security and Medicare, came George W. Bush (through Bush v. Gore). Bush wanted more tax cuts, and used a reconciliation process to get them through Congress. As Lori Montgomery reported in The Post, "A chorus of skeptics warned against spending the surplus." Bush's first Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neill, resigned after Bush pushed for a second round of tax cuts. He said, "“I believed we needed the money to facilitate fundamental tax reform and begin working on unfunded liabilities for Social Security and Medicare.” And this was AFTER Bush ignored dire warnings about terrorist threats, and 9/11 occurred, and the Bush administration was creating and manipulating "intelligence" to show that there were "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq. There weren't. The costs of the Bush years has been staggering. As The Post detailed, "Bush-era policies, meanwhile, account for more than $7 trillion and are a major contributor to the trillion-dollar annual budget deficits that are dominating the political debate."

All of this is a matter of public record. It's factual. It's real, with real-life consequences. And it continues. As respected Congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein wrote recently, "Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem." Mann and Ornstein have been covering Congress for more than forty years, and they say this: "the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party. The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition."

They continue: "thanks to the GOP, compromise has gone out the window in Washington. In the first two years of the Obama administration, nearly every presidential initiative met with vehement, rancorous and unanimous Republican opposition in the House and the Senate, followed by efforts to delegitimize the results and repeal the policies. The filibuster, once relegated to a handful of major national issues in a given Congress, became a routine weapon of obstruction, applied even to widely supported bills or presidential nominations. And Republicans in the Senate have abused the confirmation process to block any and every nominee to posts such as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, solely to keep laws that were legitimately enacted from being implemented."

Former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel called his party "irresponsible...ideological and very narrow." A long-time Republican Congressional aide called the GOP more like an "apocalyptic cult" than a genuine political party.

Bruce Bartlett, former Reagan economic advisor and Bush1 Treasury deputy, wrote this summer that "tax and budget policies and economic conditions in place at the end of the Clinton administration would have led to a cumulative budget surplus of $5.6 trillion through 2011 – enough to pay off the $5.6 trillion national debt at the end of 2000." But of course, that didn't happen. Conservatives on the Court intervened and made Bush president. And we know what happened after that.

So, go ahead, discoduck and Bill Marshall. Deny the facts. Keep making things up. Refuse to acknowledge any responsibility for the reckless people and policies you've supported (and continue to support). Join the "crazies." You'll fit right in. And you're also part of the problem.

bill marshall January 4th, 2013 | 9:28am

as usual Democracy spends hours cutting and pasting quotes from people on the left with a liberal agenda. It makes for a good lopsided article to anyone who wants his assertions to be true. It is easy to say that geroge bush made up the WMD argument and convinced the world when the fact of the matter is that current events in Syria have shown where at least some of those weapons went. But even forgoing that, It was international intelligence that made the educated guesses about Iraq just as they are doing about Iran today. In fact Saddam Hussein admitted after he was caught (on bushes watch) that he let the rumor mill grow and denied access to raise the bar so that Iran would stay afraid of him and hopefully the US would back down. He was wrong. (I am not defending the war or the lies, I am pointing out that there are two sides to the story)

I notice Democracy repeats his claim about the middle class being evisorated but does not adddress the obvious fact that even the poor in 2012 have twice what the poor had in 1990 as far as nutrional healthcare and other free resources (obamaphones) and the middle class have a higher standard of living than they did in any previous decade. There are people who got crushed in this recession but if you look they are often the people who spent instead of saved. There is no house in Charlottesville worth less than it was bought for ten years ago.

The recession was caused by Americans not paying their bills. geroge bush may have alowed too much spending but Obama has outspent him by far with nothing to show for it except an empty building where they used to make solar panels.

Where in the Constituion does it say that you can sit there and the rest of us have to work to pay your bills? You can blame Republicans for trying to stop the obamatrain but if you were actually open minded enough to see that the current spending can neither be continued nor made up for by taxing 2% of the population you would try and shut it down too.

Why you refuse to look at greece, portugal, italy and spain makes no sense. We are on a train to nowhere and when we run out of track it will not be pretty.

I would find some cut and paste quotes from conservatives for you but I think the facts on the ground speak for themselves. Stop paying people to stay home. They will find a way. They certainly did before Jimmy Carter bought them all diapers and told them they couldn't

democracy January 4th, 2013 | 11:24am

Poor Bill Marshall.

David Stockman was (and is) a Republican. Bruce Bartlett was (and is) a Republican. Richard Posner was (and is) a Republican. In the past, i've cited Kevin Phillips, who was a Reagan-era Republican, and who was a Nixon and Republican campaign strategist and consultant. Chuck Hagel was (and is) a Republican. Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein can hardly be called people with a "liberal agenda" (hey Bill, did you know that the American Revolution was a "liberal" movement?). The list goes on.

Marshall doesn't even believe honest Republicans when they tell the truth about just how crazy the conservatives in the Republican party (and in the NRA) are now. The citations and quotes I provided are hardly of the "cut and paste" variety, They are from a long laundry list of articles that've detailed the failure of Republican economic policies over the last three decades (the original Stockman article, linked below, is from 1981).

But like I said, conservatives like Marshall (and discoduck, and conservative justices on the Supreme Court), just make it up as they go. Facts are not their friends. Fantasy is.

bill marshalll January 4th, 2013 | 3:20pm

Democracy, I notice you still can't use any of those facts that are supposedly your friends to explain how you say a house on Locust aveneue built in the 1960s owned by an electrician. plumber ir jr accountant, that had no A/C , dishwasher, garbage disposal, ice maker, high speed internet, cable, smoke detectors, no fault electircal outlets, forced air furnace (instead of radiators) insulation, insulated windows and doors, and washer and dryer, that now has all that ,and more is worse off finacially today than in 1960.

Your only complaint seems to be that the rich got richer and that although the poor got dramtically richer than they were, they didn't get as much growth as the rich did. Did you ever stop to look at some more facts, like the number of skilled jobs that have been created that grew that wealth? Did you look at the number of college graduates vs the 1960s? The rich got richer by increasing thier skillsets and becoming more productive. A cashiers job is less skilled than in 1960 because the cash register does the math and even spits out the change, but you insist they should have a higher standard of living than a cashier that actually had to know how to add and subtract. A warehose workers job has been made easier by bar codes, ergonomic handtrucks and cheap forklifts so they don't even need to read beyond a 5th grade level but you want him to feed anmd clothe a family of four on that wage.

Nothing is stopping you and those like you from buying the TV for 400 bucks and giving the extra 50 bucks to the cashier and warehouse guy that you seem to be so willing to pay extra for. Oh wait, thats right, you don't want to pay extra you just want the owner of the business to make less. (like the owners of circuit city (bankrupt) and best buy (on the verge) to take a pay cut as if that would help. (which it wouldn't because whether it goes to the CEO or the warehouse guys it still gets charged to "expenses" and so the bottom line stays EXACTLY the same. )

I never try and defend spending by annybody,we pay too much for missles and bullets just like we pay too much for welfare cheats and lazy crybabies. If you came on here and said we should tax the rich and increase defense spending I would think as little of you as I do now.. Regadless of who is in charge the spending is wrong and needs to be controlled and you NEVER offer up a scenario where we could actually get out of this mess. If you think taxing the rich will do it show the numbers. It cannot be done.

At least the left finally admitted that the middle class recieved the largest share of the bush tax cuts as a group. An individual who made more saved more but that holds true for someone who made 20k vs someone who made 40k vs someone who made 60k. The more you pay in the bigger your tax cut will be... (except that when you add in all the freebies they guy making 20k gets, he actaully takes home almost as much as the guy making 40)

When will you address those issues with your precious facts?

democracy January 6th, 2013 | 7:19am

Bill, you just keep making things up to suit your narrow ideology. You can do it all you like. But that does not change anything that I've written about (1) conservative hypocrisy, (2) the evisceration of jobs and the middle class standard of living under Republican economic policies, (3) honest criticism of those policies by honest conservatives (Bruce Bartlett, Kevin Phillips, David Stockman), (4) the fact that the Republican party today is "an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition."

You seem to be stuck in a cognitive rut. Not surprising. At all.

George January 6th, 2013 | 10:43am

I am all for keeping the mentally I'll from having guns, but the result will be that any kid who was ever prescribed Ritalin even once will be prevented from owning a gun...forever.

One of the horrors of the Connecticut shooting was that the shooter was not an expected minority bathed in a dysfunctional drug/gang/single-parent culture but one of their own - upper middle class with all the material bells and whistles but with no father figure. For my two cents the father who ignored his kid for years should bear a lot of the responsibility.

George January 6th, 2013 | 10:54am

You have got to love the hypocrisy of David Gregory here. Obviously of the "gun-free zone" mentality he sends his kids to Sidwell Friends school which has eleven guards -in addition to the Secret Service firepower for the Obama kids. Then he brandishes an ammunition clip on television in disregard of the DC law after being told by the DC police it was illegal to do so.

You could not make this stuff up.

Ponce De leon January 6th, 2013 | 10:17pm

hey democracy....

Here is what your poor disadvantaged people have done with all that "food" money...

2 Democracy and DIsco - I know a lot of people who are stockpiling food, medicine, firewood, gold, barter, guns, and ammo. What are you liberals going to do when the grid goes down and you can't get the Huffington Post?

Bill Marshall January 7th, 2013 | 9:30am

one more chance democracy

How has the middle class standard of living been evisorated in the last 50 years? What job does not provide a higher standard of living than 50 years ago? Do all the people in Garrett Square with cell phones, big screens, food stamps, prenatal and post natal care. Counciling services, employment training, free school, breakfast lunch and snacks for thier kids have it rougher than the folks that were living in Vinegar hill using outhouses and paying slumlords rent?

A standard of living is everything that invloves your day to day life compared to the past... we have better medicines, easier access to credit, jobs programs, 99 weeks of unemployment, internet, cel phones, microwaves, air bags, faster 911 response times, ATM machines and on and on...

You are simply mistaken on all counts. If the middle class is suffering so much than how do you explain the expolosion of cruise ships, condos at the beach being torn down to build higher ones , international travel, and on and on... cars are safer, homes are safer, the rivers are cleaner, the parks are more expansive. There uses to be disney world in Forida and California, now we have amusement parks everywhere with wilder and wilder rides. The minimim wage in1974 was 2.10 an hour and so was a movie ticket. A movie ticket is still about an hours minimim wage in most places.

Also.. in 1973 gas prices were 53 cents a gallon or so and minimum wage was 2.10 so you could buy four gallons of gas for an hours work... but the average car got 12 miles to the gallon... so you could drive 48 miles on one hours wage. Today, minimium wage buys only two gallons but the cars avearge 24 miles to the gallon so an hour still gets you 48 miles. (unless of course you drive instead of taking the public transit that the taxpayers provide at a SUBSIDIZED rate. )

The only thing we need more of in america is jobs and we know that the the only time a liberal creates a job (outside of hollywood) is to create a government job to get in the way of a person with more stones than they have who wants to start up a business with blood sweat and tears.

You are so jealous of people with gumption. You can "quote" politicians all day but at the end of they day they are all politicians and would sell thier mother for a vote.

Dolemite January 7th, 2013 | 10:43am

"There uses to be disney world in Forida and California, now we have amusement parks everywhere with wilder and wilder rides."

QED

Old Timer January 7th, 2013 | 12:15pm

Bill,

The idea that cutting taxes on the top tier has somehow sparked innovation and we all suddenly got iphones and ice makers is just complete rubbish. Tons of stuff was being developed and innovated before Reagan, and the boom of the Clinton years where the internet and technology exploded was hardly slowed down by tax policy.

In fact, there is a reverse correlation between entrepreneurship and low tax rates on these so called investors. It's just so much easier to spin crap on wall street and skim than actually make something.

Entrepreneurship and innovation are encouraged when it's more profitable to do so and there is someone to sell it to. I realize that you like your low tax status and think because you benefit from it, the whole country does, but it's just not true. If it were, millions of jobs would have been created in the last 12 years. They haven't. And real income - yes, that thing determined by a basket of iphones and garbage disposals - is in decline. We won't add the cost of fuel and housing.

Bush's policy was just plain stupid, and the Republicans who supported it were stupid. They were also dishonest if fiscal policy was the goal. Imagine had we stuck on that course how much better we would be right now? Old scholl REAL republicans know it.

Bill Marshall January 7th, 2013 | 5:41pm

Old Timer...

EVERYBODY got a tax break... do you think a guy making 200k a year didn't invest his 8k tax break in business or spend it in a restaurant someobody else opened with his tax break? The only problem with the tax break was that the government kept spending... Do you remember a time in Bushes tenure when the Democrats refused to spend money? No they just took some pork for themselves to sell their vote. That is the problem. The GOVERNMENT is too big and Obama wants it bigger. It needs to be smaller and leaner and the only way to do that is to address spending. The rich are paying more taxes now and we will see what happens to the debt and deficit .. It won't help because it is not enough to feed the beast and they will come back for more.

You can blame republcians and I won't argue.. unless you want to blame only republicans...

My suggestion IS much higher taxes on the rich BUT it needs to be coupled with a loophole that gives a lower tax rate if the money is invested in microcap domesitc companies. This WILL generate jobs instread of having the money parked in GE stock. The rich have no reason to take any risks with their wealth because they will get taxed too high if they succeed and can only write off 3000 bucks if they lose. So the tax policy encourages them to invest in munis and other bonds or very safe stocks. It is RISK that we need in the marketplace not by government ideals but by entrepenurs with great ideas and a realistic business plan that is just slightly risiker than pension funds banks or grandmas savings should be involved in. (ie NOT Solyundra)

We got here because Americans are crybabies and want everything everyone else has but don't want to work for it. They see a guy who owns land or a business in his 60s driving a Lexus or Caddilac and assume he inherited that money when the odds are overwhelming that he put in more hours and physical labor by 25 than they have or will by age 40.

Ask anyone who is 60 years old if they could start over with all the modern improvements how much more they would have if they could get a do-over. It is easy to get ahead in America and people do it every day. Those that don't even try deserve nothing.

When we give someone with a 10th grade education enough pay to "chill" in the trailer park working at Wendys we may have solved his lifelong dream to be mediocre but the lazy SOB consumed 175k in CASH getting through the tenth grade, will never pay any real taxes (beyond alcohol and ciggarette and sales) and will consume way more than he chips in for social security and medicare. He is a finacial olser from day one and on top of that he is taking up space at a job that should be for someone IN the tenth grade saving for college.

When you reward mediocrity you get mediocrity. So in 2014 we will "reward" all the bums on the mall with Obamacare and food stamps and pray that when they get turned down for free housing they don't steal a gun and go to an elementary school for revenge.

democracy January 8th, 2013 | 7:04am

Poor Ponce de Leon doesn't even read the articles from the rags that he posts. He cites the New York Post, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which is known not only for its "sensationalist headlines" and tabloid journalism" but also for slanting its "reporting" to fit Murdoch's political and business interests. It is considered to be the least credible of New York's media publications.

And even at that, the article Ponce de Leon cites says only that the Post reviews "A database of 200 million Electronic Benefit Transfer records." It never reports how much money was fraudulently obtained. I think it's more than safe to say it's not very much or the Post would sensationalized it even more.

In his other "article," Ponce de Leon cites Yahoo news (and Ponce is quite a yahoo, isn't he?). The "article" on the "cash for clunkers" program was written by a woman who was " previously worked as a fashion industry journalist." I guess this is about as good as it gets for conservatives like Ponce de Leon (and by the way Ponce, the clunkers program was passed overwhelmingly in the House and 91-5 in the Senate in a bipartisan effort to help stimulate the economy on the heels of Bush's Great Depression. And Bush bailed out the bankers and hedge-funders who caused that economic collapse with $700 billion taxpayer dollars.) The Department of Transportation reported that ""the average gas mileage of cars being bought was 28.3 miles per gallon," much higher than the vehicles that were replaced. Susan Collins, Republican Senator from Maine, said that "vehicles being purchased under the program would go an average of 9.6 more miles per gallon than those being turned in," a huge increase (61 percent) in fuel mileage.

And poor Bill Marshall, who is giving me "one last chance" to explain his crankiness and Ideological obsession with change that has occurred over the last sixty years. Bill seems to think that because a house on Locust Avenue now has a dishwasher and a microwave when it didn't sixty years ago, that there are now no poor in the U.S. because, well, life has changed and gotten better. It's a perverse logic. It's sort of like saying that now that we no longer depend on the horse-and-buggy and have interstate highways, air travel, and cable TV that somehow poverty has been eliminated in the U.S., the middle class is large and prosperous, and the nation is in good fiscal health. Sorry, Bill. That just doesn't wash.

Bill cannot seem to escape his conservative dogmatism. He's insisted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were the root cause of the mortgage and financial crises. Untrue. In fact, "Federal housing data reveal that the charges aren't true, and that the private sector, not the government or government-backed companies, was behind the soaring subprime lending at the core of the crisis."

The truth is that "Federal Reserve Board data show that:

• More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions.

• Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year.

• Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law that's being lambasted by conservative critics."

In fact, the laissez-faire regulatory policies of the Bush administration led to the big banks "encouraging lower-income Americans to become homeowners" and they gave "unscrupulous lenders and mortgage brokers more chances to turn dreams of homeownership in nightmares." Millions of lower-middle class citizens and middle class investors are much the worse off for it.

As the New York Times reported "for much of Mr. Bush’s tenure, government statistics show, incomes for most families remained relatively stagnant while housing prices skyrocketed. That put homeownership increasingly out of reach for first-time buyers...So Mr. Bush had to, in his words, 'use the mighty muscle of the federal government' to meet his goal. He proposed affordable housing tax incentives. He insisted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac meet ambitious new goals for low-income lending...he pushed to allow first-time buyers to qualify for federally insured mortgages with no money down...The president also leaned on mortgage brokers and lenders to devise their own innovations."

The results were that "millions of Americans are facing foreclosure, homeownership rates are virtually no higher than when Mr. Bush took office, Fannie and Freddie are in a government conservatorship, and the bailout cost to taxpayers could run in the trillions." Trillions. All of us – and mostly middle class taxpayers – will get the bill for that. Bill Marshall seems not to understand or to care about this. After all, now a house on Locust Avenue has a dishwasher and a microwave.

Bruce Bartlett –– Reagan and Bush1 economic consultant, advisor, and Treasury official –– wrote in June of 2012 that "continuation of tax and budget policies and economic conditions in place at the end of the Clinton administration would have led to a cumulative budget surplus of $5.6 trillion through 2011 – enough to pay off the $5.6 trillion national debt at the end of 2000." However, due to the Bush years and policies, "Tax cuts and slower-than-expected growth reduced revenues by $6.1 trillion and spending was $5.6 trillion higher, a turnaround of $11.7 trillion." That's money that can never be spent on education, or health care, or infrastructure improvements, or cancer research or anything else that promotes the general welfare of society.

What conservative policies have given us over the years are massive budget and trade deficits, a huge national debt, millions of job losses, stagnant wages and declining hourly rates, reduced and gutted pension plans, a financial and economic meltdown, and increased poverty. And Bill Marshall – who simply fails to see the forest for the acorns –– whines that the problem is "we give someone with a 10th grade education enough pay to 'chill' in the trailer park working at Wendys."

Sorry, Bill. I've failed you. I cannot explain such obtuseness.

But I do know that it is detrimental –– even dangerous –– to the future health and prosperity of the nation.

Bill Marshall January 8th, 2013 | 10:52am

Democracy, So the private sector followed the law and loaned money to people on the assumption that if they defaulted the PMI insurance would pay ,but because the government that REQUIRED the lowered standards didn't do its job enforcing EXISTING LAWS when these people defaulted, it is now the banks fault for expecting to be paid back.? This meltdown occurred because America went on a spending spree on cars boats vacation homes, first homes when they should have stayed renters, expensive colleges when they should have stayed in state , laptops, ipods, etc etc etc and when the bank actually wanted the money repaid the people balked and crashed the system. George Bush made sure the government paid its bills and that had nothing to do with the crash. Talk to your friends who want more than they earned and didn't mind lying on applications to get it.

It is obvious that you think the lowest level worker should have a house and a car for running a french fry machine. That is fine, except that you don't think the guy that quit that job and spent the next twenty years working 70 hours a week should be able to keep the fruits of his labor. You simply need to change your moniker from "democracy" to "socialist" and it would make things less confusing.

You can keep blaming george bush but as Obama passes his eight years of expnditures in four with no results. Your bush sword is getting duller by the day. The american people caused this. They bought too much on credit. Wages are determned by what the guy next to you will do your job for. If you don't lke the wage offered quit and let a real man do what it takes to feed his family without having to suckle off of the taxes of little old ladies who mop floors and pay taxes because that job is not beneath them like it is you.

Welfare should be for people who can't work not people who won't work. Everybody knows somebody milking the system and those somebodies add up.

Obama got his tax increase on the 1%, now its time for him to stop spending money and actually run the country on its income instead of the visa card from the bank of china.

It is also telling that you are okay with welfare cheats spending taxpayer money they were supposed to use to feed their kids on strippers and booze. It shows that as long as it isn't your money you don't care how it gets wasted. You like shooting the messenger but that doesn't change the fact that a grandmothers tax contribution went down a strippers garter and then later that night up her nose. It also doesn't change the fact that the cash for clunkers debacle was a financial disaster for the taxpayers and saved very little fuel because the people that bought the new cars started driving more because they had a reliable car and were "saving" so much.

The poor are way better off than ever and way better off than any almost any other country on the planet. Thats still not good enough for you though. (because its not YOUR money you are spending)

Skinny January 8th, 2013 | 11:25am

A free and open society will have this

Caesonia January 8th, 2013 | 6:33pm

Bill, like it or not, it was Ronald Reagan who coined the phrases...."deficits don't matter." He was a Republican. Republicans have been in control of the house for 14 of the last 18 years, which, the last time I checked, was responsible for appropriations and spending. Like it or, the GOP signed every cheque Bush asked for, and yes, spending did slow down in 2006 when the Democrats took the house. So all this big spending you keep pointing at the Democrats, really does lie primarily at the feet of the GOP. What's more, the majority of the loans that failed were not Freddie Fannie loans BECAUSE the borrowers couldn't qualify for standard loans. The lending to the less affluent rules didn't apply to them, they did it of their own choice. And the hiked up the interest rates to pay for the risk, based on a very easy money policy from the Fed.

My big problem with folks like you is not that I necessarily disagree with much of what you say, it is the yellow dog partisanship. Instead of pointing fingers at the Democrats, clean up your own party, and have them practicing what you preach. Don't sit there harping on how the Democrats are spending so much money when the people you vote for are piddling through it like no tomorrow when it's on their agenda. If you aren't willing to cut some of everything, including the massive military gravy train, then you aren't willing to cut spending.

Ponce De leon January 8th, 2013 | 8:41pm

Caesonia. If you will take a few minutes and read this you will see how the Community reinevestment act DID play a major role in the mortgage meltdown. Remenber the private interests need to compete in a real world marketplace and if the Bank of America lowers its standards and JP morgan doesnt JP morgan sells no loans... no diferrent than lowes competing with Home Depot. It is not one sided or conservative based but is prety well balanced and referenced well.

Also, spending did not slow down with a Democratic congress, in fact the only year in modern history where spending decreased was 2010 because of the trillion dollar spending in 2009 wasn't repeate. d. here is a chart...

there is plenty of pork on both sides and the democrats are as bad as the republicans about securing defense spending... remember Va went for obama even though we have the worlds largest naval base and NOVA has multi billion dollar defense contracts that this state relies on... there are no politicians with clean hands.

Bill Marshall January 9th, 2013 | 9:56am

caseonia and democracy,
I am not defending republican spending and have always advocated for cuts across the board.(including defense) Democracy doesn't rail against defense spending he advocates for more tax revenue to give away to people who won't work. I have no problems with helping those who cannot help themselves but I am against giving away everything to anybody that makes the claim because just like was predicted more and more people line up for the easy way out.

When reagan said deficits don't matter he was reffering to reasonable debt to finance things that could be amortized over the debt like new military investments that would keep the nation safe from aggressors. He had no idea that the Congress (all of them) would steal the entire treasury and then some for unbelievable pork and pet projects. Context matters.

So you can hate my views on welfare chumps and that is a worthy debate, but don't accuse me of being a partisan hump as I am not. If the hook did an article on some new defense contract I would point out the waste in that too.

Caesonia January 9th, 2013 | 2:28pm

Recently I took a lot of flack on this forum in a different thread over some less generous comments on a few hale looking panhandlers. Rest assured, Mr Marshall, I do not have a soft spot for welfare chumps, be they of the 1% or the bottom 10%.

But, notice how you instantly excuse Reagan about deficits because it was spending on the military? That's my point, and my problem about Republicans. I don't agree that military spending should be sacrosanct from spending cuts, especially if you are about fiscal responsibility. I don't agree all military spending keeps us safe, and I don't think national security rests purely in the number of bombs and war ships we have from bloated private contractors.

Having a healthy population with good hygiene and a mouth full of teeth, combined with the ability to the think critically is paramount. So you know, a reasonable education that doesn't rely on government funded private school vouchers for religious madras or pats someone on the back just for learning to write at the 6th grade level. Then require 2 years mandatory civil service male for female.

Just think, with our for profit private fraudulent mandatory healthcare system - brought to you by the GOP 20 years ago - we spend 7% more of our GDP on healthcare than any other industrialized nation. Imagine how many carriers we could by with that? How many shipping containers could we inspect?

Bismark had this figured out 150 years ago, and little Germany was able to beat the tar out of Western and most of Eastern Europe by itself twice. Only old man winter got them in WWII while Stalin cowered in bunker.

But no, Republicans keep you focused only how many cell phones some Cadillac welfare mom has, because they harbor a grudge from 40 years ago, or their buddies are profiting too much from the poor administration healthcare. Along with some Democrats.

Yes, we need to cut spending, and use what we spend much better, but that requires looking at the big picture and letting go of some Shiboleths. Republicans are the worst about it, and they never let facts get in the way of their ideology.

Bill Marshall January 9th, 2013 | 3:52pm

caseonia, Good debate, my response however is that the defense spending that Ronald Reagan did at the time was a good and nessasary investment that broke the back of the USSR. That does not mean that the money spent elswhere or since or even before in viet nam was wise. Just like some welfare programs are fine. My problem is in the aggregate on both it places an unfair burden on those that work and I DO resent the public opinion of late that because someone accumulated money instead of blowing it that money should be confiscated for the common good. It is the mindset that will destroy us. If I had my way employers would not be allowed to offer health insurance, everyone would become part of the risk pool and insurance companies would be encouraged to offer "whole life" policies so that people paid in more when they were young which because of inflation would become less (and more affordable) like a home mortgage.as the grew older But the real problem with healthcare is why ot costs 100 bucks for a doctor to confim that you have poison ivy and give you a prescription when you should have been able to get it from the pharmacist directly once a year. If everyone had a mandatory 500 dollar deductible with credits for the poor you would see a lot more people treating inor injuries at home instead of insurance companies paying 500 bucks for a twisted ankle.

My argument with education is the same.. They spend too much for to little. Where is all the money going? Why does a new high school cost 80 MILLION dollars? Every UVA tuituion is subsidized by 8k by the state and they say thats still not enough. There is more than enough money to go around it is just wasted and instead of rexamining where it is going they just cry poormouth. In DC they spend 24k per kid and have a 50% dropout rate. Money is not the answer, acountability is.

And lastly, IF you pay the guy with a GED and a clean record and work ethic a "living wage" as defined by the liberals, then what do we pay the dropout with the bad attitude? Minimum wage should apply to the minimum worker and people with better skills will get more, BUT the government gives that dropout a free pass through the use of socialist programs that are a joke, fodo stamps and starting next year free health insurance. So he has ZERO reason to take that job. Good workers make more than minimum wage very quickly in this world and all minimum wage jobs should be for thse misfits or someone who is simply using it as a stepping stone to elswhere, retirement income supplement or a high school kid looking for fun money or to save for college.

When we reward mediocrity we get mediocrity. But we punish people for striking out on thier own by forcing them to prepay estimated taxes in advance and making them jump through excessive red tape to even get started. Where can these policies possibly lead us except into bankruptcy? The math does not work. So cut spending on defense and UNentitlment programs, make it easy for someone to open a business and find all the waste fraud and abuse. (like Mr Obama promised to do on "day one" when he was campaigning in 2007.)

Once that is under control THEN we can figure out exactly how much more revenue we need. Till then Obama is simply a teenager begging for the credit card while refusing to stop buying shoes at Lord and Taylor and coffee at starbucks.

Augco January 10th, 2013 | 5:35pm

Don't you guys have jobs? If not, you shouldn't be entitled to an opinion until you get one :)